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I think we need to remember...that a lot of energy was put into changing things to get us to the point where we are now. But being where we are now doesn't mean that we don't have to put in the same kind of energy to get us to a place where we ought to be.

Kerry James Marshall

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Kerry James Marshall
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 17
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Birmingham
Alabama
Kerry Marshall
Mean
Changing
Needs
Ought
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Energy
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More quotes by Kerry James Marshall

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When I started, I was aware of using the black as a rhetorical device. It's understanding that black people come in a wide range of colors, but you find instances in a lot of black literature in which the blackness is used as a metaphor.
Kerry James Marshall
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The first freedom is to be in possession of yourself - to own yourself, to not be subject to the will of somebody else. In a capitalist society, that means having a certain economic wherewithal so that you can do what you wish to do without having to ask permission.
Kerry James Marshall
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The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry.
Kerry James Marshall
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Abstraction and representation are supposed to be going down two very different paths, one sociological and the other aesthetic.
Kerry James Marshall
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The privileged position of whiteness doesn't allow for someone with one drop of Negro blood to be considered white, which allows whiteness to be a fairly pure category while blackness has to absorb an expansive reality of representation.
Kerry James Marshall
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I try to tell a story when I'm playing. I try to make an emotional connection when I'm playing versus before I played just to play. Now there's a sense of purpose of why I play, of how I play. So people can actually feel what I'm saying to them.
Kerry James Marshall
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Black painters have done all kinds of work. It's the treatment of forms they engage in-that's what determines the value of the work, not whether you call them a black artist or not.
Kerry James Marshall
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Like a lot of young people who wanted to be artists, comics were a gateway for me.
Kerry James Marshall
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I came in making choices about how I deploy aesthetics and imagery strategically. It seems to me that's the only legitimate way of making work.
Kerry James Marshall
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I don't see those paintings as abstractions, especially because they are emblems of the inkblot. They aren't smashed together they are constructed shape-by-shape, layer-by-layer, like any other picture.
Kerry James Marshall
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In some places you can find an extreme blackness used as a descriptive. I also take into account historical realities that some of this range in color is the legacy of white supremacy.
Kerry James Marshall
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The moment you introduce difference into a museum, then the privileged space is contested, and under the most ideal circumstances what all artists want is the chance to be competitive. That's what I think the museum is supposed to be.
Kerry James Marshall
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I really just want to be an inspiration. I'm a regular guy, that had a dream, that came from a small town, that wanted to play guitar and just liked playing. I want to encourage people.
Kerry James Marshall
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My own personal sound is really progressive. It's like a mixture of gospel, pop, neo-soul, R&B. It's like a huge gumbo. If you're eating gumbo you grab a whole like cup full of whatever. You're getting a whole bunch of stuff that makes this amazing food in your mouth. So that's essentially kind of like what my sound is.
Kerry James Marshall
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I think the museum should be an arena in which ideals can hash it out, fight it out, tooth and nail, for attention.
Kerry James Marshall
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I tend to think having that extreme of color, that kind of black, is amazingly beautiful...and powerful. What I was thinking to do with my image was to reclaim the image of blackness as an emblem of power.
Kerry James Marshall
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Before people outside of the Western European tradition started asking to be in there, the people who were accumulating objects for the museum were perfectly satisfied with the narrative they were constructing.
Kerry James Marshall
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I want to create music that you can just vibe to. Put in your car and just you know like you roll all the windows up and you're like dancing and you just don't know why you're dancing but the music just makes you move.
Kerry James Marshall
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If you have a dream: Number one, make a plan. And then execute that plan. And there will be failures along that line. Don't let that discourage you. Because failure is part of the process ... make the necessary adjustments and you can be successful at whatever you do.
Kerry James Marshall
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Part of the history of black people in the western hemisphere, in some ways, has been fleeing from this notion that they were black. So I can represent an ideal, and with that, you can demonstrate that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to run from, and that, in fact, a good deal of beauty that resides there.
Kerry James Marshall